ENGLISH

The New (So-Called) Magdeburg Experiments of Otto Von Guericke

By Otto Von Guericke (auth.)

Book information

Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Year
1994
ISBN
978-94-010-4888-0, 978-94-011-2010-4
DOI
10.1007/978-94-011-2010-4
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
10 MB (10163394 bytes)
Series
Archives Internationales D’Histoire Des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas 137
Edition
1
Pages
400\418
Orientation
yes
Scanned
yes
Time added
2013-09-17 05:17:12
Modern Philosophy; History; Philosophy of Science;Observations and Techniques

Description

Otto von Guericke has been called a neglected genius, overlooked by most modern scholars, scientists, and laymen. He wrote his Experimenta Nova in the seventeenth century in Latin, a dead language for the most part inaccessible to contemporary scientists. Thus isolated by the remoteness of his time and his means of communication, von Guericke has for many years been denied the recognition he deserves in the English speaking world. Indeed, the century in which he lived witnessed the invention of six important and valuable scientific instruments -- the microscope, the telescope, the pendulum clock, the barometer, the thermometer, and the air pump. Von Guericke was associated with the development of the last three of these; he also experimented with a rudimentary electric machine. Thus his ExperimentaNova was an important work, heralding the emerging empiricism of seventeenth century science, and merits this first English translation of von Guericke's magnus opus.

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